[Ask The Readers] Are You Ditching Your Jailbreak In Favor Of iOS 7?

Unless you’re a clueless happy-go-lucky Windows Phone user, you’ll know that iOS 7 is launching worldwide today. It’s undoubtedly one of the biggest upgrades in iOS’ history, if not the biggest one. Besides being a complete visual overhaul of every nook and cranny of the OS, it adds a bunch of welcomed new features such as an SBSettings-like Control Center, AirDrop, FaceTime Audio, and call blocking etc., while majorly revamping all built-in apps. You can learn about them all in our detailed iOS 7 coverage (in progress). The question now is, do you upgrade to get all these features, or do you stay on iOS 6 to retain your jailbreak access? In today’s poll, we briefly discuss the pros and cons of both before leaving the floor to you, our readers, to let us know of your thoughts.

If we were to ask this question a year ago, the circumstances would’ve been completely different. For some, iOS 6 felt more like a downgrade instead of an upgrade because of Apple Maps replacing Google Maps without a readily available alternative (it took Google Maps several months to make it to the App Store as a third-party app), multiple bugs related to battery life, and a general lack of novelty. I personally stayed on my jailbroken iOS 5.1.1 setup until the jailbreak for iOS 6 was released around 6.1.x.

This time around though, I know I will not hesitate to upgrade to iOS 7 the minute it becomes available, because it’s a huge upgrade in every imaginable way. iOS was starting to look old, and was severely lagging behind Android in some OS-level features; iOS 7 brings the platform back in that race.

iOS 7 felt oddly block-ey and repulsive at first when Apple previewed it at WWDC, but I have grown to like it over the past few months. My extreme dislike for over-simplified icons remains as strong as ever, but they feel like a minor issue when you see the monumental amount of work Apple has put into iOS 7’s visuals, overhauled systems apps, reworked multitasking (which is now closer to how Android does it), and Control Center, etc.

Part of what makes my decision of upgrading to iOS 7 easy is that I no longer feel the need to use many jailbreak tweaks that I used to rely on. The vast majority of my peeves with iOS were fixed in iOS 5, and iOS 7 is making things even better. SBSettings? Control Center in iOS 7 has got you covered. Syncing with iTunes wirelessly? We got that in iOS 5! Unlimited apps in folders? iOS 7 takes care of that. This is true for many other jailbreak tweaks and apps as well; the list goes on and on!